


I Am Here.

by HostilePoet17



Series: Here [1]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-28
Updated: 2015-04-28
Packaged: 2018-03-26 06:33:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3840652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HostilePoet17/pseuds/HostilePoet17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A one-shot based on Sam's experiences with the entity. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"She wasn’t just slipping away anymore, she was being forced out, evicted from her own brain. Please, please, please don’t do this."</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Am Here.

**Author's Note:**

> My affection for the characters definitely came out through Sam's perspective. She's such a joy and a challenge to write - she's a wonderfully strong character, but also SO much smarter than I am, so the technobabble is always an issue in fics! I hope I wrote her okay for you guys, and I hope you all enjoy the fic. It's my first posted SG-1 fic, there's plenty drafts sitting on my hard drive, but study week brought out my procrastination and this happened.  
> Comments are always welcomed. :)

‘What is your purpose here?’ Sam typed, looking up at the camera as it eyed the Colonel and the threat he posed.

‘What is yours?’ It replied.

Her gaze went to Daniel, questioning. “Maybe it’s trying to figure out why we sent a probe to its world.”

She agreed, turning back to the keyboard. ‘We are explorers’ she began to type, and all of a sudden she could feel energy thrumming up through her fingers, invading her, oh god, oh god, she couldn’t move. What was happening? Her mind was on fire, she could feel something pushing in, probing. Oh god, help me. She tried to call out, tried to say something, but her body wouldn’t respond. The energy was breaking through, she could feel it pouring into her brain, smothering her.

_Somebody help me, please._

Everything went black.

* * *

 

Something wasn’t right. Struggling to push through the haze of darkness, Sam tried to wake herself up, but something just wasn’t right. She tried to gather her thoughts, but something was blocking her, holding her back. She was dimly aware of background noise, the sounds she associated with the infirmary, but they were being distorted, pulled through something else. What was going on? Was she injured? Frowning, she tried to push forward through the fog of her mind.

And encountered the resistance of something else.

Oh god.

Her eyes snapped open, but she hadn’t done it. The Colonel was standing over her, his concerned expression immediately turning wary as he noticed her wakefulness.

“Carter?”

“ _Colonel_ ,” she tried to say, but nothing happened. Something, someone, was stopping her. She could feel it crowding in around her, pushing down on her conscious mind. Oh god, was it a Goa’uld? “ _Sir_!” Why couldn’t she move?

The Colonel turned towards the observation deck. “She’s conscious.”

All of a sudden, she could feel the presence pushing harder, pulling out threads of her thoughts, trying to equate the Colonel with a memory. She could see its own memory, the little salute he had pulled in front of the security camera earlier –

Oh god, the computer virus. It was _in her head_.

“ _Sir! Help me, please. It’s inside of me_!”        

She felt it acting out the familiar gesture to him, looking for verification that it was him. Hesitantly, he repeated it back.

A faint tapping of heels accompanied Janet’s face appearing in her line of vision, distress evident on her face.

“Can ya talk?” The Colonel asked softly.

“ _Yes! Yes, I can. But it’s stopping me! Janet, you have to get it out of me_!”

Janet cast a look at him. “Colonel, her PET scan resembles that of someone who’s been a victim of a stroke.”

Oh no. Oh, please no.

The Colonel still had his eyes on her, trying to take in what Janet was saying.

“Parts of her brain are reactive. Others seem dormant or suppressed.”

“ _But I’m right here_!”

“The entity does seem to have complete motor control, however. It might be able to communicate with a speech synthesiser, if I explain its operation.”

“Just concentrate on getting it out of her, will ya?”

Janet looked heartbroken. “I don’t know _how_ , sir.”

“ _No, Janet. Come on! You’re brilliant, you’ve solved tons of difficult alien cases. You can do it again, just think!_ ”

The Colonel was facing the window again. “What about the Tok’ra, or the Asgard? Don’t they owe us a favour by now?”

“Until the situation is resolved, Colonel,” she heard General Hammond reply, “We’re still under quarantine. That means from our allies as well. We cannot risk the entity leaving this facility.”

The Colonel’s gaze was fixed on her again, and the entity seemed fascinated with him, it kept Sam’s eyes focused on him at all times. She flinched internally as she felt it rifling through her memories once more, drawing out thoughts of him.

Suddenly she was bombarded with scenes from the last few years, each one focusing around the Colonel, endless memories overlapping one another. The volume was too much for Sam, she felt the pressure of it intensify on her consciousness, and nearly faded out from the sensory overload alone.

“ _Please! Stop it_!”

It was terrifying, this horrible sense of being smothered inside her own head. Oh god, it was Jolinar all over again.

The entity seemed to prefer Sam’s own cognitive profile on the Colonel to its own information gleaned from their computers, and kept pulling out as much information as possible. The pressure on Sam was too much, and she felt herself slipping away…

* * *

 

Her next moment of consciousness came as the entity’s attention was finally drawn away from Sam’s memories, and she used that moment of reprieve to push through the fog.

Janet stood before her, setting up the speech synthesiser, patiently explaining its functions. “Do you understand?”

The entity rifled through Sam’s mind quickly, causing a stab of pain to lance through her, searching for the correct way to respond. Finding the right gesture, it nodded.

“Okay. Give it a go.”

She felt herself staring back at Janet, and wondered why it wasn’t responding. Curious, she nudged at it, trying to sense its intent, but it blocked her out. It could feel her trying to communicate but refused to acknowledge her. Instead, she could sense it concentrating on its own memories pulled from the SGC records, searching for a match to Janet’s face.

“ **You are Doctor Janet Frasier** ,” it suddenly stated, fingers dancing over the keyboard as though Sam had used the synthesiser for years.

Janet nodded cautiously. “Yes.”

But that was all the entity wanted, it seemed. A confirmation of its own information. It fell silent, reading the file gleaned from the database, shutting Janet out.

Frowning, Janet took the hint, and left.

The entity had immersed itself in Janet’s service record, so Sam took the opportunity to approach it once more.

“ _I know you can hear me_.”

It was silent, still glutting itself on information.

“ _Please, I need to know why you’re here. You have to understand that this is my brain, and human brains aren’t meant to be shared like this_.”

It continued to ignore her, but she kept pressing.

“ _Look, maybe we can find you another alternative, something without another consciousness. But please, you need to understand that I can’t share. I had to do it before, and I can’t live through that again, please_.”

That caught its attention, and all of a sudden it was swooping down on her, trying to find the source of that claim. Fire ripped through her brain at the sudden ferocity of its attack. It was tearing through her memories, and she tried her best to stop it.

“ _Oh god, stop it, please_!”

It sensed her growing terror and latched itself onto to the catalyst behind it, following it along to the memory it held: Jolinar.

With a swift and merciless assault, it enveloped her in her memories of Jolinar, amplifying it to huge proportions, punishing her for her impertinence.

Oh god, she couldn’t breathe. Her mind couldn’t take this level of suffocation. It was going to kill her, it was _trying to_. She was gonna lose the battle right there, in her own mind. And nobody would know what had happened.

Then, all of a sudden, its focus shifted, and Sam felt the chokehold of memories fall away. The Colonel was standing in front of her, and the entity practically stood to attention inside her mind. Interesting reaction.

“ **O’Neill** ,” it typed, and Sam could feel that it felt…pride in its act, almost a sense of glee, that it could identify him out loud, and let him know that it knew him.

“That’s right,” he replied, carefully. He looked to the SF’s. “Go get the doc’.” His focus returned to her. “And, you are..?”

“ **I am within**.”

No kidding.

“ **You are O’Neill** ,” it pushed as Janet entered the room.

“Yeah. We’ve established that.”

**“This one has memory of you.”**

That angered the Colonel. “The one you’re talking about is a person. Her name is Major Samantha Carter.”

She could see its memory of her own file at that. This interested the entity. “ **Then I am Major** –”

“No,” the Colonel cut it off quickly. “No, you’re not.”

Sam recognised the fury in his voice, the kind he reserved for off-worlders or politicians who had pissed him off. Never her.

Janet stepped in. “We understand that you’ve taken control of Major Carter, but you’re not her.”

“ **There was no other choice. No other place to go. You wish to terminate**.”

“ _I told you, we’ll find an alternative_!” Sam yelled.

“Still do,” the Colonel replied.

“ **But you will not. Not now. I have observed, you value the life of one**.”

“Yes, we do.”

Sam felt dread prickling through her as the entity focused on particular memories – The Colonel fighting to save her from the other side of the force shield, and later, his Zat’arc confession. Oh god.

“ **This one is important**.”

“She is.”

“ **For this reason, this one was chosen. You will not terminate this one in order to destroy me**.” And Sam could see it now, the entity watching her and the Colonel’s interactions from base footage, had read his submissions recommending her promotion, had read file after file of mission reports documenting every time they had fought side by side. And it had sifted through her own memories of him to confirm what it already suspected – he would not sacrifice her easily. Horror settled in her as she realised her own actions had doomed her to this.

“It went into Sam out of self-preservation,” Janet observed.

“ **I cannot be removed from this mind without terminating. You will not terminate this one. None of you will. Therefore, I will survive**.”

That was it, no way out. And Sam knew her team wouldn’t let her die, so she would be doomed to be trapped with it forever.

The Colonel said nothing, just pushed past Janet, and left the room. Not meeting her patient’s gaze, the diminutive doctor followed suit, leaving the entity to mull over the success of its threat, and Sam to shrink away in terror.

* * *

 

Sam felt herself fading in and out of consciousness, the entity seemed to be swallowing up more of her than her brain could handle. She hoped that it would eventually push so far that she’d drift away before she could even realise it, the terror of being stuck with it in her mind forever was a horrifying alternative.

She became vaguely aware of the entity’s focus shifting again, its attention caught by a new arrival in the room. Daniel!

“My name is Daniel,” he greeted.

The entity held no interest in him, having already swept through his files. It had noticed the Colonel standing behind him, but at Sam’s own increased attention, it engaged with the archaeologist, intrigued by her reaction.

“ **I am aware**.”

“Right, you, uh,” Daniel smiled slightly. “You read my file.”

“ **Yes**.”

“Then you know I am a scientist.”

“ **Yes**.” It was already tired of him, and looked to the Colonel. “ **You have determined I cannot be extracted**.”

“Yes,” Daniel repeated it, reluctantly.

The entity was whizzing through its data on Daniel, and seemed to note his compassion that was documented in every mission report. “ **I will now offer information in exchange for continued survival**.”

“ _Daniel, please, don’t help it_ ,” Sam urged in silence.

“We don’t want your information, we want Sam.”

Yes!

“ **Leaving this mind would cause termination**.” The entity seemed to be confused at his misunderstanding of the situation.

“You left that thing you constructed in the MALP room, go back?”

“ **I have already grown beyond its capacity**.”

“Wh-why did you do this? Why did you come here in the first place?”

“ **You attacked**.”

What?

Daniel frowned. “No. We sent a probe.”

“ **Yes**.”

“It’s, uh, something we do to determine whether or not a place is safe for humans.”

“ **Radio-energy was emitted from your probe. Contagion. Much damage was caused within**.”

The MALP affected the entity’s home-world?

“Within what?”

“ **Within us. It spread before we understood it was poison.** ”

Oh god, they’d started this. They’d sent a MALP that had hurt them, and now it was hurting her. “ _We didn’t mean to_!” Sam explained, earnestly. “ _We didn’t know_!”

“You’re saying your world was damaged by radio waves from one probe?” Daniel asked in disbelief.

“ **Yes**.”

“We didn’t mean to hurt you. It was a … a misunderstanding.”

“ **Yet it is done**.”

“So, you came here to… To what?”

“ **Preserve**.”

“Preserve your world?”

“ **Yes**.”

“How?”

“ **By destroying you**.”

Oh no.

“Well, that’s not gonna happen,” the Colonel replied.

“ **Transmission was interrupted. If I had been able to complete transmission, you would have been destroyed. My world would have been preserved**.”

“Well, in a way, you succeeded,” Daniel placated it. “We won’t go back there. You can repair the damage we did, and we won’t send any more probes through.”

“Yes, we will,” the Colonel’s voice cut through the room. The entity focused its gaze on him, and Sam saw the barely restrained rage in his eyes.

“Jack?”

“We’ll send dozens of them. One after another,” he moved closer to the bed, glaring at the entity. “I don’t care what it does.”

His quiet fury terrified the entity, Sam could feel it in every synapse of her brain, and winced.

“ **No**.”

“Leave her. Now.”

“ **You won’t**.”

Would it beg?

The Colonel smirked, and Sam felt a chill run through her. “You’ve read my file, think again.”

“ **I must preserve** ,” it insisted.

“Fine! Stick to your guns then.”

“Jack,” Daniel interjected.

“Daniel! We’re gonna do this my way.”

“ **You can’t**.”

“General?”

The voice of General Hammond came over the intercom. “You’re damn right we can.”

“ **No. Please**.”

“Leave her.”

“ **I must preserve**.”

“If you wanna preserve your world, leave Major Carter right now.”

Sam could feel the entity’s terror and tried to reach out to it. But it blocked her out, the force of its alarm almost knocking her into unconsciousness again.

Then it was moving. Furiously ripping wires away, and pushing itself out of the bed. Sam vaguely heard the Colonel give the order to stand down, but the weight of the entity’s fear was dizzying, her vision was fading black at the edges.

“Let her go!”

Go _where_?

Everything was in blackness now, and her grasp on consciousness was slipping away. The entity was utterly terrified, but instead of trying to push down on Sam, instead of suffocating her, it seemed to be gathering her up, drawing her into one place.

Somebody, please, help me…

Suddenly, she was being pulled away, out of her own conscious, _how was that possible_? She could feel that same fizzing energy as before burning through her, compacting her, moving her away from where she was supposed to be.

Please, no.

She wasn’t just slipping away anymore, she was being forced out, evicted from her own brain. Please, please, please don’t do this.

She felt an external wave of energy that caused the entity to falter before throwing all of its might into pushing her out once more.

Please, no…

* * *

 

I can’t breathe.

I can’t feel.

Everything is black.

Where am I?

Hello?

What happened to me? Oh god, where am I?

A memory… pain, so much pain, and a burning sensation. Oh god, the entity. It threw me out of my brain, but to where?

Hello? It must have sent me _somewhere_ , somewhere that can hold my consciousness. But where?

And where is it? Is it still in my body? I’m not, that’s for sure.

It panicked when the Colonel threatened it, so it got rid of me. The Colonel. A photo of him flashes up before me. Hey, I recognise it, that’s the one from his service record. His service record, from the base computers, one of the things the entity ate up. Has it blended itself with me? I can’t feel another presence, just me, in a box that’s too small.

So, why can I see his service record? Can I see mine? Yes! There it is. So, if I think of, say, Daniel’s… There’s his too. Interesting, the information is produced by merely thinking about it. Just like the entity. So, where is it? Where is my body?

A camera feed blinks to life before me, focused on an observation room in the infirmary, and there I am. Oh god, they have me on life support, they know not to. The Colonel is sitting right there, and he knows I don’t want that. God, how did I end up there? A new piece of footage appears before me, rewinding back a few hours, in corridor 6-4-9, just off the infirmary. I can see me, uh, the entity, I guess. It’s doing something, sending energy out of my body, and the Colonel zats it, me… I think I remember that, but it keeps going, and then he zats me again, oh god. The Colonel killed me.

So, why am I here?

And wait a minute, I can see footage that occurred _after_ the entity invaded our computers, and I can access any information I want. Which only leaves one conclusion:

I’m trapped in the mainframe.

Is the entity in my body? I think about my still body lying in the infirmary, and the security feed flickers into existence once more. The Colonel hasn’t moved, but Janet is entering the room now. She’s been crying, so things are bad. Things are really bad, because Janet is _so_ strong, she’s our rock, the one who patches us up and sends us back out to fall apart all over again, and not once has she ever asked to stop having to dance with the deaths of her friends and colleagues on a daily basis.

“Still no change,” she observes quietly. And oh god, that machine is pumping air through my lungs, pushing them in and out, it’s grotesque in its artificiality. Janet, please, take it away, you know I want better. Please.

But where does that leave me? A ghost in the machine?

“I don’t know if she ever told you this, Colonel, but Sam made a living will. No extraordinary means.”

Yes, I’ve told him. Sitting on his back-porch after a strained team gathering, our first after Jolinar. Because I’d take a bullet over a snake any day, and so would he. He was the only one who would honour my wishes, Daniel would be too sentimental, and Teal’c didn’t understand Tau’ri culture so well back then. So, I sat in the moonlight, rolling a bottle of beer between my palms, and made my commanding officer promise to always let me die if there was no hope.

So why is he just sitting there?

“Yeah, she told me.”

“There’s, ah,” and Janet takes a steeling breath. “There’s no brain activity of any kind. No brain wave of either Sam or the entity. She’s being kept alive entirely on life support.”

The entity’s not in my body anymore? I reach out and give a mental nudge to the darkness around me, but I am alone in a sea of facts and figures.

“I think it’s time to let her go, sir.”

I’m so sorry, Janet. You shouldn’t have to do this.

“Just give it a minute, yeah? Yeah.”

My chest (well, not in a technical sense) tightens painfully, the kind of pain that comes with stranded Colonels, impassable shields, underground work-camps, and the realisation that you can never have the one thing you want, no matter how much you want it.

And I ache suddenly, because this isn’t fair. Because Jack has to decide to kill me for the second time in one night, and I am suddenly aware that he has been very much compromised. Because Janet will have to let her best friend go, and then go home and explain to Cassie why her godmother will never ever play chess with her again. And the thought of never seeing Cassie again is so very not fair.

And now Daniel and Teal’c are there, and the realisation that I will never have Daniel smile at me in that wonderful way of his ever again, or bask in the warm glow of Teal’c’s unwavering friendship and loyalty, that is breaking my heart. I am splitting to pieces, in a way that shouldn’t be possible for someone so incorporeal.

And General Hammond will have to tell my father what happened, and how I died because I was so curious. Dad always warned me “curiosity killed the cat, Sammie,” when I was a kid. And I want to cry so desperately now because this is so damn ironic.

Teal’c is looking at my body now, full of false life, and I can’t bear how he wears his grief on his beautifully regal face. I cannot bear to break Teal’c. And I think I might have broken Janet, and I’m oh so sorry.

“I just thought you should know,” Daniel begins. “Hammond ordered the mainframe in the MALP room destroyed. In case the entity managed to find its way back in there somehow. It’s probably what it was trying to do.”

No. No, Daniel. It’s me! I’m in here!

And I can feel that terrible pierce of hope blooming in me, because the mainframe is still intact, and I’m still in here, and I just cannot leave my family, not yet.

I’m in here, Daniel. I’m here.

I need to let them know, but how? I cannot project, only observe – the entity had a much greater power than mine, the ability to interact, to lure. There’s gotta be a way!

Think, Sam, think!

I reach out, trying to find any remaining thread of the entity, any clue to help me advertise my presence, because so help me, I am not giving up without a fight.

I feel the data buzz in the air around me, and intuitively, I can sense it’s a system restart. Weird, but also very very cool.

Come on, there’s gotta be something I can do. Think, think, think. The entity recycled our means of communication for itself, so turnabout’s fair play?

I push and push, gotta be something left for me to catch onto.

And there it is. A little spark, a little code left over and abandoned from when I was swallowed whole.

_WE ARE EXPLORERSSSSSSSSSSSSS_ blinks in front of me, and I could fall on my hands and knees and thank the stars right now.

The base alarm has been activated somewhere, and I can hear an order for SG-1 to head to the MALP room. Yes, come find me! I’m here!

I latch myself onto the message, onto the one link to the outside I can find. And I yell as loud as I can.

I’m here! I’M HERE! I AM HERE!

Come on, please. Let it work.

I throw all my energy into this. Come on! Gotta project this message to Abydos and back.

I AM HERE. I AM HERE. I AM HERE.

“I think our friend is back, sir.”

No! Damn it, Siler! I AM HERE!

“Alright, let’s blow it.”

No, Jack, look! Pay attention! It’s me!

I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait!” YES. Daniel!

I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE hear me hear me I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE.

“Look at this!”

I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE

“The entity,” Teal’c intones grimly.

I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE

“No! It said it couldn’t go back. It’s Sam.”

You clever boy, you wonderful clever man.

I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE

“Daniel, I shot her twice.”

I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE

“After it transferred Sam’s consciousness out of her body. You killed the entity, after it put Sam into this, this thing! She’s in here.”

I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE

“Why? Why would it do that?”

I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE

“You demanded it. You threatened to send in an army of probes through to its homeworld. Saving Sam and allowing itself to be killed was the only way to preserve its homeworld.”

I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE I AM HERE

Please, please, please.

I am here.

I’m here.

There’s a beeping noise nearby, continuous and intrusive. My head hurts too much, is too sensitive to cope with it. I try to sigh, and my lungs feel like I’ve been underwater, they strain under the ache of this breath, expelling it hard.

“She’s back!” A triumphant voice announces.

Who’s back? Back where? Oh, where am I?

I manage to open my eyes, and Janet and the Colonel are staring at me.

Oh, I’m _here_.

“Hey, Carter. Where’ve you been?”

“It’s gone?” I can speak, I can breathe, and oh boy, I can have headaches. Please please please tell me it’s gone. I reach out to find it but I’m getting a little dizzy here.

“Yes, it is,” General Hammond affirms.

I’m here, it’s not.

I won.

“I was shouting… for you to hear.”

“We heard.”

Good, that’s good. God, when did staying awake get so damn hard? Were my eyelids always this heavy?

“Get some rest, Sam.” Janet’s quietly happy words are the last things I hear.


End file.
